Takahiro Miyashita of the Japanese menswear brand TheSoloist has always had affinity for New York. The only outpost for his first label, Number (N)ine, outside of Japan was here in TriBeCa. Much of it has to do with Al Albayan, who has been Miyashita’s right hand since the early N(N) days. Together, they have cooked up something for New York once again. RE:AL is TheSoloist is a pop-up shop, again in TriBeCa that opened last weekend and will run through July. The idea was to open a version of an airport gift shop. Miyashita is fond of traveling and not fond of diffusion lines, so doing something quite different but still familiar seemed like a fitting idea.

The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe is inextricably woven into the fabric of the New-York-Before-It-Sucked (that is the ‘70s and the ‘80s) cultural mythology. He’s always been that for the art circle, and he’s become that for a wider circle after Just Kids, a Patti Smith’s memoir about their friendship wildly popular amongst those who weren’t there. For fashion people, Raf Simons most recently popularized the name by devoting an entire collection to Mapplethorpe’s work.

Unapologetically gay, unapologetically promiscuous, unapologetically bohemian, Mapplethorpe was indeed a fixture on the New York cultural circuit, hanging out at Max’s Kansas City, rooming with Patti Smith, circling the requisite Warhol circle, and so on – the stuff of legend to be sure.

This year the ever savvy Guggenheim is capitalizing on the legend by holding a year-long two-part exhibit on Mapplethorpe, called Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now. The show is timely, as the LGBTQ rights continues to be a hot-button topic that attracts millennials. Why not attract them to a museum to see the granddaddy of it all? Because Mapplethorpe remains supremely important when it comes to highlighting the gay scene in New York. And not only highlighting it, but sticking it in the face of America. Contrary to the title, I find nothing implicit in the tensions Mapplethorpe put on display with his work.

On Friday, Yang Li and Genesis P-Orridge and Opening Ceremony held a silent auction at the Ace Hotel in New York to raise funds for Genesis’ ongoing leukemia treatment. Below is our coverage of the event.

Last night we hosted our Black Celebration party with Boris Bidjan Saberi New York and NYCult at Public Arts in New York featuring performances by Black Asteroid, Katie Rex, Karim So, and Joseph Quartana. Below is our coverage of the event.